Peppa Pig: Fun and Games … another helping of pixellated porcine pleasure

If you're currently in possession of a pre-school child you'll no doubt be acquainted with Peppa Pig, the award-winning animated series, which usually involves the eponymous heroine jumping in muddy puddles, accompanied by the rest of her jolly family.

Last year, the vast merchandising machine powered by this amiable cartoon belched out a reasonable Peppa Pig video game – and now here's another helping of pixellated porcine pleasure. Like its predecessor (which shifted a whopping 200,000 copies), Peppa Pig: Fun and Games is a collection of 11 quaint mini-tasks, situated in various areas of Peppa's world. In the front garden you can pop bubbles or wash Peppa's bike; in the back, there are ducks to feed and apples to pick. A couple of the options are more creative, allowing players to build simple pictures out of fuzzy felt pieces, or dress up Peppa in a variety of costumes.

Although the suggested age range is 3-7, I'd say it's aimed at the younger end of that demographic – even more so than the first Peppa Pig game. While that title featured reasonably complex challenges – such as preparing and tossing pancakes and flying kites – this one is just a series of simple interactions, bereft of gameplay mechanics such as scoring and "enemies". The box says it's all about developing hand-eye coordination and concentration skills, which is all very well, but it would have been simple to add skill levels and a more demanding set of tasks for older Peppa fans.

As an adult gamer I was also disappointed that there weren't more mini-games this time – Nintendo crammed almost four times as many on its DS hit 42 All-Time Classics, and with websites like Cbeebies and Poissonrouge.com offering similar experiences for free (although substantially less portable of course), you may feel slightly short changed. However, the presentation is lovely, with all the music and voices from the cartoons, as well as pixel-perfect renditions of the key characters. And three-year-olds don't tend to have the same concept of value as their parents, so my sons didn't complain about a lack of variety, or that most of the challenges are variations on the same theme.

I can't help but expect more from a full-price DS release, but can see this will be a valuable commodity on long car rides and boring trips to relatives' houses.